Rekindling My Childhood Love for Writing

Story:

There was a time when I believed words could fix everything.

I was eight years old when I wrote my first story. It was about a time-traveling pigeon who rescued lost socks from dryers. The plot made little sense, but I remember the feeling that coursed through me as I scribbled page after page in a wide-ruled notebook: a quiet kind of joy, like building a secret world no one else could see unless I let them.

Back then, I didn’t write to impress. I wrote to explore. I wrote because stories lived in my head like hummingbirds—bright, restless, beautiful. And I wrote because no one told me not to.

But something shifted as I got older.

The pigeon was replaced by papers, grades, and deadlines. Stories became assignments, not adventures. Creativity was boxed into formats and word counts, judged for structure rather than soul. Slowly, the joy I once found in writing drained away. I told myself I wasn’t good enough. I stopped writing altogether. It was easier to silence that part of me than to face the fear of being "not enough."

Years passed. I filled my life with practical things—jobs, responsibilities, routines. I traded in journals for spreadsheets, poetry for productivity. But sometimes, usually when things were quiet and the world outside softened, I’d feel it again: a small tug, like a whisper asking, “Do you remember me?”

I always ignored it.

Until one rainy afternoon.

I was cleaning out a box of old books in the attic when I found it—a worn, navy-blue notebook with frayed edges. The name written on the inside cover was mine, though the handwriting looked like it belonged to someone braver. Curious, I flipped through the pages.

There it was. The pigeon. The dryer. The socks.

And just like that, the dam broke.

I laughed aloud, partly from embarrassment, partly from wonder. Each line was clumsy and wild and bursting with imagination. But beneath the silly plot and juvenile grammar, I could see it: the spark. The same one that once made my heart race with excitement at the thought of creating something from nothing.

That night, I sat down at my desk with a blank page and no plan. I stared at the blinking cursor, terrified. But then I remembered: I didn’t need permission to write. I never did.

So I began.

At first, the words came slow and awkward, like limbs trying to remember how to dance after years of stillness. But I kept going. I wrote about things that didn’t make sense. I wrote scenes that didn’t connect. I wrote dialogues that felt too sentimental. But I wrote. And slowly, the joy returned—not all at once, but in little flickers.

Writing again didn’t solve all my problems. It didn’t erase the years I spent doubting myself or heal the wounds of silence. But it gave me something I hadn’t realized I’d lost: myself.

Through writing, I started to hear my own voice again—not the one shaped by expectations or fears, but the one that was always there, just buried under dust and doubt. I wrote about my childhood, about people I missed, about places I wanted to go. I wrote poems on napkins, stories on my phone, paragraphs in the margins of books.

Eventually, I joined an online writing community. I shared a few pieces, terrified of what others might say. But instead of criticism, I found connection. Strangers related to my words, thanked me for saying what they couldn’t. Their comments were small reminders that maybe, just maybe, my voice mattered.

And so I kept writing—not to be famous, not to be perfect, but to feel alive.

Rekindling my childhood love for writing didn’t change the world. But it changed mine. It reminded me that even in a life filled with obligations and noise, we owe it to ourselves to make room for the things that light us up. That it’s never too late to return to the passions we thought we’d outgrown. And that sometimes, the truest version of who we are is hiding in an old notebook, just waiting for us to turn the page.

So here I am, telling this story—not because it’s extraordinary, but because it’s real. Because maybe you, too, once loved something and lost it. Maybe you need a sign to pick up that pen, brush, camera, guitar, or dream again.

Let this be it.

Let this be your rainy afternoon.